Get More Control of Your Small Business Advertising

Did you ever feel that?

You get sold on some brilliant advertising. It’s going to get your phone ringing, people queuing outside your door and round the block. It’s expensive, what have you got to lose? When it’s going to pay for itself within a few weeks.

Then nothing happens.

You feel angry, mad to the pit of your stomach. You phone the rep that sold the game changing solution and demand to know what’s going on.

He slips into his well rehearsed patter, fine tuned to put you at ease. Most people don’t respond to an advertising message, he says.. until they’ve seen it five or six times. It will take time, but it will work.

He’s given you a special phone number that’ll record exactly how many new calls your going to get, to prove that it works.

The clock ticks, pages turn over on the calendar and still nothing happens.

Frustrating isn’t it. You don’t have control of your advertising.

But, it’s not your fault.

The advertising industry is massive. It doesn’t want you to feel in control. It wants to control your customers for you, take them by the hand, like little children to buy what they want them to. In reality it also has a massive influence on you, as the one buying their space.

You’ve never had any lessons at school about how to advertise your business online, it all seems too complicated and you’ve heard that if you get it wrong and it can backfire all over facebook, youtube and the entire internet leaving you looking foolish.

This myth is wrong! There are so many things you can do to promote your business online.

Do I need to tell you that 78% of internet users research a product online before making any decision about parting with their cash.

What you need to start doing is simple, you don’t even need a website. It won’t send your sales into orbit over night, but it does work. And it works very well if you keep at it and it’s super cheap.

Sign up with a good email service provider such as aweber or the one I use active campaign. The cost of this is minimal, active campaign’s basic account is only £6/mth for 500 subscribers.

After you’ve signed up, you need to start collecting your customer’s emails and getting them onto your subscriber list.

Sounds difficult, but don’t get intimidated at this stage.

Just get a load of leaflets printed up explaining why your customers should give you their email.

The leaflet can be a simple message typed out on your computer. Your precious customer needs a reason to do what your asking, maybe tempt them into receiving news of special offers, or lure them with a 10% discount, or a free coffee with their next meal. Obviously, you need to reassure them that your not going to be sending them endless amounts of junk.

Leaflets are cheap as chips, the company I use only charges £25 for 1000 A5 full colour and that price includes delivery.

To each and every customer passing through your till, you must hand them a leaflet. Start having having them distributed to local houses, post them yourself. The more you do this the happier your bank balance is going to be.

The leaflet and the email company are doing the hard work while you run your business.

Over time your list will grow and in a few months you’ll be surprised at how big it is.

Then you’ll need to send them the right type of emails at least once a month to keep you in their memory.

I’ve underlined the right type of emails because this is critical. Send the wrong emails and it won’t work.

But, don’t worry you can easily learn how to get the tone and style of emails right.

Once you master this and you’ve got a good numbers on your list you’ll be in control of your advertising. This is a powerful weapon in your arsenal to keep fighting on the same playing field at the national giants.

With it you’ll be able to:-

drum up business during the quiet times of the week

let people know about your new lines

convince people to come back again and again

create lifetime loyal customers

Sending out feedback emails you’ll:-

get more and better quality online reviews

discover hidden things about your business that only a customer will tell you

Honestly, please do yourself a massive favour and start collecting emails as soon as you can, each one is worth good money to your business.

I’ll be going into more detail and the specific mechanics of how to implement this in future posts.